July 28, 1997
We need your help to urge the White House and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to stay firm in their commitment to help struggling poor families and battered women on welfare. Together we can help many women and children realize their goal of self-reliance. Contact as soon as possible President Clinton through the White House Public Liaison office (202) 456-2930 and HHS Secretary Donna Shalala at (202) 690-6610. Ask them to:
1. Preserve basic legal protections for all workers. Eliminate the provision in the conference agreement stating that payments for participants in work experience or community service programs are not compensation for "work," and recipients therefore not entitled to the same rights as employees.
2. Protect workfare workers against discrimination and maintain minimum wage for workfare participants. Ensure that workfare recipients are afforded employee rights in order for them to be able to take full advantage of the Fair Labor and Standards Act and all other federal laws protecting them against discrimination, sexual harassment, and unsafe or unhealthy workplaces.
3. Clarify that waivers for battered women (the Family Violence Option) do not count toward the 20% hardship exemption. It is important to make clear that this is not a permanent waiver from welfare-to-work requirements but rather a temporary reprieve for women who need time to recover from their recent exposure to violence and to obtain the support they will need to make the transition from welfare-to-work.
4. Widen access to vocational education and training for welfare recipients. Remove unwarranted caps which limit the number of women and teen-agers eligible to receive the vocational education and training they must have to find jobs that will enable them to support their families.
Conferees for the Budget Reconciliation Act of 1997 have taken extreme positions on a number of key welfare and domestic violence provisions for the upcoming negotiations with the administration. The budget bill would deny basic labor, health and safety protections and domestic violence services to welfare recipients who have moved into workfare positions. It would also restrict access to vocational education and training for workfare participants. These changes and others in the conference bill will lead to the most exploitive workfare conditions imaginable. President Clinton must stand up to these draconian proposals that the Republican conferees have adopted.
Despite the fact that both the House and Senate Budget Committees passed a budget resolution containing a clarification for the Family Violence Option that would assist states in helping domestic violence survivors on welfare, the conferees have dropped that language. The Republican leadership is apparently willing to place one-quarter to one- third of the women and children on welfare, the ones who are dealing with family violence, at severe risk. Not only do their actions undermine our national priority of combatting domestic violence, they may spell defeat for tens of thousands of women who have embarked on the welfare-to-work path.
Under the current language, it is not sufficiently clear to some states that they may elect, without penalty, to implement the Family Violence Option (FVO) which will temporarily waive work and other requirements for survivors of domestic violence. The clarification dropped from the budget bill specified that states could count these temporary exemptions separate from an already allowed hardship pool of 20% of the welfare caseload. FVO waivers will allow abuse survivors to obtain important services to help them escape batterers and maintain steady employment. Many states have already agreed to include the FVO in their new welfare plans, and we need your help to assure strong White House support to put the clarification back in the budget bill.
Other provisions of the legislation would allow states to delay for six months paying unemployment compensation to low wage and contingent workers (most of whom are women); allow states to reduce or eliminate Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for certain elderly and disabled beneficiaries, thus pushing two million women deeper into poverty; and would cut back on benefits for elderly, disabled, and child immigrants. And if all these provisions weren't mean enough, the Republican conferees added a penalty against states that fail to sanction (penalize) families where adults refuse to work -- this means that if you're a survivor of domestic violence afraid to go to work because of your abuser's interference or because you can't find dependable child care, you are in very deep trouble. You could be cut off from both a job and from any welfare benefits, permanently!
Please help us send a message to the White House that the President must strive to ensure basic rights for all workers, especially welfare recipients. The current provision does not classify participants in work experience and community service as true employees and thus denies workfare recipients basic protection under the Fair Labor Standards Act and other federal laws and regulations. As a result, workfare workers will not be afforded protection against discrimination and sexual harassment nor will they be guaranteed minimum wage for work performed. Also, states will be allowed to subtract the value of certain benefits (such as non-cash welfare assistance like transportation vouchers or food stamps or child support payments) from welfare workers' projected pay (minimum wages times number of hours worked). This means that workfare workers could be earning less than $2.00 per hour in wages. This very bad policy will trap families in workfare situations which consistently keep them below the poverty level.
In order to pull themselves out of this cycle of poverty, many young women are still struggling to gain the basic skills needed to support their families and remove themselves permanently from the welfare rolls. Access to vocational education and training has been restricted under the conference agreement and there is a cap (6.5% of total caseload) on the numbers of participants that can be enrolled in those programs. The final result will be one that allows very few welfare recipients in each state to receive vital vocational educational and training opportunities -- which leads us back to the basic question of what is the purpose of welfare "reform?"
It is obvious that conferees intend to use poor women and children as pawns in negotiations with the President; these provisions are so extreme that the White House may be willing to trade other items in order to gain a reasonable approach for welfare recipients. President Clinton has previously indicated that workfare participants must be covered by federal minimum wage laws. Whether he is willing to sacrifice poor women and children for other gains remains to be seen.
We must urge the President and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala, to stand firm in their position to help victims of domestic violence put an end to the cycles of abuse and poverty in their families' lives. And we must urge the administration to improve the budget bill to protect welfare workers through application of all federal labor laws, including those which prohibit employment discrimination. Please call now.
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